When I tried to re install Ubuntu 11.10, I wanted to erase the existing Ubuntu using gparted editor/ something else icon in Ubuntu. I found it was not detecting any existing partition.

Then when I googled and used gparted editor I found it was showing unallocated space of entire hard disk space. However I am able to boot to Ubuntu normally and when I use disk utilities I am able to access and see all partitions. Please help me to solve my issue

3 Answers
3

If your HDD is plugged into a non-standard SATA port it may not be seen by Ubuntu. Gigabyte for example have GSATA, which is currently unsupported at least as of a couple of months ago. It is worth checking if for any reason the software cannot see the HDD.

Some quick googling indicates that this "GSATA" nonsense is just some marketing B.S. label for the ports coming from the JMicron standard AHCI SATA controller. In any case, he said the drive is seen just fine; it's the partitions that he's having trouble with.
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psusiApr 7 '12 at 1:52

It is still worth checking because if he can't see the partition for any reason and he happens to have it plugged into a GSATA port, that is going to be the reason why. But you are right that I am not concerning myself too much in the details here - only that it might have slight relevance.
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defayeApr 7 '12 at 1:57

No, it is not going to be the reason why. As I said, this GSATA port nonsense is just a bog standard SATA port that Ubuntu is already recognizing and accessing the drive just fine.
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psusiApr 7 '12 at 2:06

Yes you are right. My answer is out of place - he already installed it so it must be using a standard SATA port - the drive was corrupted. But you know what @psusi, if someone has a motherboard with this kind of port described, they may have problems installing ubuntu, my answer is not nonsense, I know it for a fact as of version 11.10
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defayeApr 7 '12 at 3:42

This is almost always due to a corrupt partition table, which causes gparted to show the drive as being empty. Run sudo parted /dev/sda print to try and look at the partition table from the command line and it will probably report what the error is.